PCI DSS

Summary

Regulation: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Abbreviation: PCI DSS

Governs these parties: any business that accepts card payments, including seasonal or small businesses

Enforced by: Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, JCB, and Discover

Details

PCI (or payment card industry) compliance is the set of policies and procedures developed to protect credit, debit, and cash card transactions and prevent the misuse of cardholders' personal information.

Any business that transmits, stores, handles or accepts credit card data need to be defended against ransomware, exploits, and adversaries. In order to comply with PCI DSS, you should restrict access to stored cardholder data, and secure, track and monitor access to network resources with encrypted transmissions.

The rest of this document is designed to help our community understand PCI DSS better by outlining the following information.

How this regulation relates to cybersecurity

PCI compliance refers to a set of 12 security standards that businesses must use when accepting, transmitting, processing, and storing credit card data:

  1. Install and maintain a firewall, including testing network connections, and restricting connections to untrusted networks.
  2. Change vendor-supplied default passwords and security settings, including enabling only necessary services, removing functionality where warranted, and encrypting access.
  3. Protect stored cardholder data, including having policies for disposing of data, limiting what is stored, and avoiding storing certain types of data.
  4. Encrypt cardholder data when transmitting it across open, public networks.
  5. Use and regularly update antivirus software, meaning performing and documenting periodic scans, as well as ensuring the software is running.
  6. Develop security systems and create processes to find and take action on vulnerabilities.
  7. Restrict access to cardholder data on a need-to-know basis. That requires defining the access certain roles need, as well as creating user privileges and control systems.
  8. Assign user IDs to everybody with computer access and ensure authentication to users, document their policies in this area.
  9. Restrict physical access to cardholder data, using monitor tools, or handling certain equipment in sensitive areas of the business.
  10. Track and monitor who accesses networks and cardholder data. It requires having an audit trail, using time-stamped tracking tools, and reviewing logs for suspicious activity.
  11. Regularly test systems, processes, and inventory wireless access points do quarterly vulnerability scans and monitor traffic.
  12. Have a policy on information security at least once a year that lays out usage rules for certain technologies and explains everyone's responsibilities.

How Coro handles compliance for you

At Coro, we've done the research thoroughly and regularly track updates to the regulation in order to ensure that you are implementing best practices in the areas we cover when we're protecting your systems.

The following table outlines the requirements described by PCI DSS that Coro implements in conjunction with Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Disclaimer

This table does not guarantee that your organization is compliant with these regulations. As a best practice, seek assistance from a certified auditor when completing your analysis.

Category Requirement How Coro does it
Cloud Security & Privacy Malware and ransomware injection Detects malware and ransomware files in cloud drives
Cloud app account takeover Monitors access to cloud apps and user/admin activities on them
Data governance over cloud drives Data loss prevention (DLP) for regulatorily and business-sensitive data
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) Multi-factor authentication at cloud app access
Data Encryption Safeguarding stored sensitive information against unauthorized use and information leaks
Audit and activity logs Enables searching & working with all activities across environments
Email Security & Privacy Malware and ransomware injection Detection of malware and ransomware in email attachments
Identity spoofing Detection of social engineering attacks based on adaptive identity monitoring
Generic and spear phishing Detection of social engineering attacks based on email content analysis
Embedded links to malicious URLs Detects embedded links to malicious servers
DLP over outgoing/incoming email Encrypts emails before they are sent, which are then decrypted by their recipients at the other end.
Business email compromise (BEC) Scans business email, detects and protects against social engineering attacks
Email account takeover Email attacks from within the organization
Encryption of email during transmission Email is encrypted during transit between the sender and the recipient
Audit and activity logs Enables searching & working with all activities across environments
Endpoint Security & Privacy Antivirus (AV) Detects and remediates files with high-risk content based on their signatures
Data recovery Secures local snapshots of data
DLP on endpoint devices Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for regulatorily and business-sensitive data
Audit and activity logs Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing
Data Governance Data distribution governance and role management Provides data loss prevention (DLP) for data defined as sensitive by regulations
PCI monitoring Monitors PCI (payment card industry) payment transaction data and cardholder data
Audit and activity logs Archives all system activities for a period of seven years, supporting referencing and auditing